I’ve just been on the church youth retreat at Naivasha. This time the youth came, so we didn’t have to turn it into a leaders’ retreat again.
It was a lot more tiring than last time, as I had anticipated. During the morning we had been to the Naivasha Country Club to go swimming. We had planned to go to Fish Eagle Camp, but their pool was being cleaned, so we drove to another place but the pool looked like it needed to be cleaned, so we ended up at the Country Club, which looked really posh but cost less than the other places. I spent too much time lying at the side of the pool and got very sunburnt.
On Saturday night, after the barbeque, disco and fireworks, we showed some films outdoors, using a video projector. I went to bed after the second one, but some people stayed up to watch four films in a row, including The Jungle Book!
We did fireworks slightly differently from how they would have been done in the UK. We gave everyone matches, opened an enourmous box of fireworks and let them do what they liked! The fireworks were finished pretty quickly, except for the firecrackers which people stocked up on and let off all through the films and on the way home the following day.
I was driving an open backed pickup, and most of the time people rode on the back rather than in the cab. Two of the guys rode all the way to Naivasha and back home on the back of the pickup as well. At one point Andrew (one of the other leaders) decided that lying on the roof of the pickup was the best way to travel.
On Sunday we went to the gorge. We were going to play a football type game in it, but as we walked to one end we discovered that there was a small part which was flooded. We were about to turn back when Andrew, without taking off his shoes or rolling up his trousers, waded into the water, which came three quarters of the way up his waist. He then proceeded to carry most of us across to the other side, although I took my shoes off and waded. There were several other places which were also flooded, but many of those could be passed by climing round the sides. On the way back some people managed to climb along a ledge above the flooded part and jump down the other side. It was an interesting team building exercise which was far more fun than anything we could have organised on purpose!
It’s a weekend I won’t forget soon, not least because it’s going to be a while before my skin stops being bright red.